be with her, he told himself as he drifted off, as sure as if he’d settled on a treatment. This isn’t selfish at all.
He might’ve known it wouldn’t be so easy.
Will woke at the shift change, noises familiar: the more frequent elevator dings, the rattle of dining carts, the greetings of the morning crew and the goodbyes of those finishing up. His head was thudding from leftover tension and from the awkward position he’d dozed in, but on his lap Nora slept soundly, at some point in the night having compacted herself, knees pulled up almost to her chest so she could fit her whole body on the love seat, her cheek—she had drooled a little—on his thigh. The room was still empty of other visitors, so Will guessed it’d been a slow overnight around here. As carefully as possible, he slid his phone from his pocket and sent a text to Gerald, an activity he absolutely could not have imagined ever doing only a few months ago.
Were you able to find coverage for my shift today? he typed, checking for typos before he pressed send. He wasn’t going to be caught sending Gerald Abraham an accidental, autocorrected We’re for Were.
He set down the phone and closed his eyes again, knowing Gerald was not a particularly fast texter. But within a minute the reply came: Yes.
Will might have been unsettled by seeing Gerald’s curtness in text message form, but he could see by the gray bubble beneath that he was still typing, so at least he wouldn’t be leaving it at that.
Sally asks how your neighbor is doing.
Will started to type his response, a jargony summary of Jonah’s injuries, before he realized that he hadn’t told Sally about any of this.
Gerald’s third reply came in while Will’s fingers still hovered over his screen.
I am currently with Sally, as I slept over at her home last night.
Then there was a winking emoji.
“Jesus Christ!” Will said, nearly dropping the phone.
Nora jerked awake. “What happened?” she said, her voice somehow both groggy and deeply alert. “Is Jonah okay?”
Will reached out, settled a hand on her back. “Yeah, everything’s fine. I’m sorry. I was—uh. Texting with my boss.”
Who had clearly been desperate to inform him about this latest development in his (re)marriage efforts.
Nora sagged in relief, her breath coming quickly, and Will rubbed her back, apologizing again.
“Rounds are probably starting soon, so we might want to try to get into Jonah’s room, see if we can be there to catch the doctor.”
She nodded, shifting her body, pre-stretches that told him she was feeling the cramped discomfort, too. She turned toward him and set a hand on his thigh, pressing a closed-mouth kiss to his lips that—even in spite of their location—he wanted to take deeper. It’d been so long, after all, and—
“Oh no,” Nora said, jerking back and looking down at Will’s lap, lifting her hand slowly from his thigh before clapping it down again, groaning dramatically. “I did it again.”
He smiled and caught her hand, giving a smacking, teasing kiss to her palm. “It’s no big deal,” he said, thinking that he could be perfectly happy waking up with Nora Clarke drooling on him for the rest of his life. “Go ahead and get cleaned up,” he told her. “I’ll meet you back in the hallway.”
She leaned forward and kissed him again, standing to grab her bag. When she started to wheel it away, he felt the squeeze of her fingers around his, and he cleared his throat when he realized he’d been holding on to her. He let go, a wispy, nearly forgotten thread of discomfort winding through him that he shook off.
Focus, Will, he told himself, running through the questions he wanted to ask the surgeon when she came by this morning. He made his own way down the hall to a bathroom, splashing water on his face and brushing his teeth with one of the small, plastic-wrapped complimentary toothbrushes the hospital provided for overnight visitors. He stopped at a vending machine in the hall, got coffees for himself and Nora and a granola bar for her. He went to the nurses’ station, glad to see that at least one of the nurses he’d spoken to last night was still there; she greeted him with a big smile and gleefully introduced him to the nurses who’d just come on.
“Your friend’s up,” she told him, and he straightened, immediately looking down the hall for Nora.